Rollo May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. His childhood
was not particularly pleasant: His parents didn’t get along and
eventually
divorced, and his sister had a psychotic breakdown.

After a brief stint at Michigan State (he was asked to leave because
of his involvement with a radical student magazine), he attended
Oberlin
College in Ohio, where he received his bachelors degree.

After graduation, he went to Greece, where he taught English at
Anatolia
College for three years. During this period, he also spent time
as
an itinerant artist and even studied briefly with Alfred Adler.

When he returned to the US, he entered Union Theological Seminary
and
became friends with one of his
teachers, Paul Tillich, the existentialist theologian, who would have a
profound effect on his thinking. May received his BD in 1938.

May suffered from tuberculosis, and had to spend three years in a
sanatorium.
This was probably the turning point of his life. While he faced
the
possibility of death, he also filled his empty hours with
reading.
Among the literature he read were the writings of Soren Kierkegaard,
the
Danish religious writer who inspired much of the existential movement,
and provided the inspiration for May’s theory.

He went on to study psychoanalysis at White Institute, where he met
people such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm. And finally,
he went to Columbia University in New York, where in 1949 he received
the
first PhD in clinical psychology that institution ever awarded.

After receiving his PhD, he went on to teach at a variety of top
schools.
In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the book
Existence,
which introduced existential psychology to the US. He spent the
last
years of his life in Tiburon, California, until he died in October of
1994.

Theory

Rollo May is the best known American existential psychologist.
Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism
in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig
Binswanger
is great. Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in
that
he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and
more
interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches,
especially Freud’s.

May uses some traditional existential terms slightly differently
than
others, and invents new words for some of existentialism’s old ideas. Destiny,
for example, is roughly the same as thrownness combined with
fallenness.
It is that part of our lives that is determined for us, our raw
materials,
if you like, for the project of creating our lives. Another
example
is the word courage, which he uses more often than the
traditional
term "authenticity" to mean facing one’s anxiety and rising above it.

He is also the only existential psychologist I’m aware of who
discusses
certain “stages” (not in the strict Freudian sense, of course) of
development:

Innocence -- the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the
infant.
The innocent is premoral, i.e. is neither bad nor good. Like a
wild
animal who kills to eat, the innocent is only doing what he or she must
do. But an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a
drive to fulfil their needs!

Rebellion -- the childhood and adolescent stage of developing
one’s ego or self-consciousness by means of contrast with adults, from
the “no” of the two year old to the “no way” of the teenager. The
rebellious person wants freedom, but has as yet no full understanding
of
the responsibility that goes with it. The teenager may want to
spend
their allowance in any way they choose -- yet they still expect the
parent
to provide the money, and will complain about unfairness if they don't
get it!

Ordinary -- the normal adult ego, conventional and a little
boring,
perhaps. They have learned responsibility, but find it too
demanding,
and so seek refuge in conformity and traditional values.

Creative -- the authentic adult, the existential stage,
beyond
ego and self-actualizing. This is the person who, accepting
destiny,
faces anxiety with courage!

These are not stages in the traditional sense. A child may
certainly
be innocent, ordinary or creative at times; An adult may be
rebellious.
The only attachments to certain ages is in terms of salience:
Rebelliousness
stands out in the two year old and the teenager!

On the other hand, he is every bit as interested in anxiety
as
any existentialist. His first book, The Meaning of Anxiety,
was based on his doctoral dissertation, which in turn was based on his
reading of Kierkegaard. His definition of anxiety is “the
apprehension
cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential
to his existence as a self” (1967, p. 72). While not “pure”
existentialism,
it does obviously include fear of death or “nothingness.” Later,
he quotes Kierkegaard: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."

Love and Will

Many of May’s unique ideas can be found in the book I consider his
best,
Love
and Will. In his efforts at reconciling Freud and the
existentialists,
he turns his attention to motivation. His basic
motivational
construct is the daimonic. The daimonic is the entire
system
of motives, different for each individual. It is composed of a
collection
of specific motives called daimons.

The word daimon is from the Greek, and means little god. It
comes
to us as demon, with a very negative connotation. But originally,
a daimon could be bad or good. Daimons include lower needs, such
as food and sex, as well as higher needs, such as love.
Basically,
he says, a daimon is anything that can take over the person, a
situation
he refers to as daimonic possession. It is then, when the
balance among daimons is disrupted, that they should be considered
“evil”
-- as the phrase implies! This idea is similar to Binswanger's
idea
of themes, or Horney's idea of coping strategies.

For May, one of the most important daimons is eros.
Eros
is love (not sex), and in Greek mythology was a minor god pictured as a
young man. (See the story of Eros and Psyche by clicking
here!) Later, Eros would be transformed into that annoying
little
pest, Cupid. May understood love as the need we have to “become
one”
with another person, and refers to an ancient Greek story by
Aristophanes: People were originally four-legged, four-armed,
two-headed
creatures. When we became a little too prideful, the gods split
us
in two, male and female, and cursed us with the never-ending desire to
recover our missing half!

Anyway, like any daimon, eros is a good thing until it takes over
the
personality, until we become obsessed with it.

Another important concept for May is will: The ability
to organize oneself in order to achieve one’s goals. This makes
will
roughly synonymous with ego and reality-testing, but with its own store
of energy, as in ego psychology. I suspect he got the notion from
Otto Rank, who uses will in the same way. May hints that will,
too,
is a daimon that can potentially take over the person.

Another definition of will is “the ability to make wishes
come
true.” Wishes are “playful imaginings of possibilities,” and are
manifestations of our daimons. Many wishes, of course, come from
eros. But they require will to make them happen! Hence, we
can see three “personality types” coming out of our relative supply,
you
might say, of our wishes for love and the will to realize them.
Note
that he doesn't actually come out and name them -- that would be too
categorical
for an existentialist -- and they are not either-or pigeon holes by any
means. But he does use various terms to refer to them, and I have
picked representative ones.

There is the type he refers to as “neo-Puritan,” who is all
will,
but no love. They have amazing self-discipline, and can “make
things
happen”... but they have no wishes to act upon. So they become
“anal”
and perfectionistic, but empty and “dried-up.” The archetypal
example
is Ebenezer Scrooge.

The second type he refers to as “infantile.” They are
all
wishes but no will. Filled with dreams and desires, they don’t
have
the self-discipline to make anything of their dreams and desires, and
so
become dependent and conformist. They love, but their love means
little. Perhaps Homer Simpson is the clearest example!

The last type is the "creative" type. May recommends,
wisely,
that we should cultivate a balance of these two aspects of our
personalities.
He said “Man’s task is to unite love and will.” This idea is, in
fact, an old one that we find among quite a few theorists. Otto
Rank,
for example, makes the same contrast with death (which includes both
our
need for others and our fear of life) and life (which includes both our
need for autonomy and our fear of loneliness). Other theorists
have
talked about communion and agency, homonymy and autonomy, nurturance
and
assertiveness, affiliation and achievement, and so on.

Myths

May’s last book was The Cry for Myth. He
pointed
out that a big problem in the twentieth century was our loss of
values.
All the different values around us lead us to doubt all values.
As
Nietzsche pointed out, if God is dead (i.e. absolutes are gone), then
anything
is permitted!

May says we have to create our own values, each of us
individually.
This, of course, is difficult to say the least. So we need help,
not forced on us, but “offered up” for us to use as we will.

Enter myths, stories that help us to “make sense” out of out
lives, “guiding narratives.” They resemble to some extent Jung’s
archetypes, but they can be conscious and unconscious, collective and
personal.
A good example is how many people live their lives based on stories
from
the Bible.

Other examples you may be familiar with include Horatio Alger,
Oedipus
Rex, Sisyphus, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Leave it to Beaver, Star
Wars,
Little House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, South Park, and the fables
of
Aesop. As I intentionally suggest with this list, a lot of
stories
make lousy myths. Many stories emphasize the magical granting of
one's wishes (infantile). Others promise success in exchange for
hard work and self-sacrifice (neo-Puritan). Many of our stories
today
say that valuelessness is itself the best value! Instead, says
May,
we should be actively working to create new myths that support people’s
efforts at making the best of life, instead of undermining them!

The idea sounds good -- but it isn’t terribly existential!
Most
existentialists feel that it is necessary to face reality much more
directly
than “myths” imply. In fact, they sound a little too much like
what
the great mass of people succumb to as a part of fallenness,
conventionality,
and inauthenticity! A controversy for the future....

Readings

May writes very well and all his books are quite readable. His
first was The Meaning of Anxiety (1950). General
overviews
include Man’s Search for Himself (1953), Psychology
and the Human Dilemma (1967), and The Discovery of Being
(1983). Strongly recommended are Love and Will
(1969)
and The Cry for Myth (1991). There are quite a few
others!